


The Space Between

by sheron



Series: Writer Peggy AU [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Discussion of Violence, Discussion of war, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Male-Female Friendship, POV Peggy Carter, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Veterans, Writer Peggy, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/pseuds/sheron
Summary: Sequel to "Travelling Companions", in which Peggy is a successful writer in modern day New York, sharing an apartment with her best-friend and war vet Daniel, when Jack crashes into their lives.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place months after ["Travelling Companions"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7269154), and will probably make more sense if you read that first. I hope you enjoy my take on how a modern setting changes things up. Please note that the story contains _discussion of suicide_ , but no graphic description. YMMV. (Written for the 'suicide attempt' square on my hc_bingo card.)

 

 

"―and she attempts to take her own life because she feels responsible for what happened to her little sister. Alice feels isolated from her parents." Peggy was on a roll. "She has to go to a new school since her parents moved so all her friends got left behind." She paused when she realized she'd been talking non-stop for the past five minutes. "Does that make sense?"

Jack rubbed his brow. "I guess."

"Well, that sounds enthusiastic," Peggy said grumpily. 

Jack snorted. "You're completely neurotic about this book."

"This book is six months late and I'm still trying to nail down my protagonist's past." It came out regrettably short and snippy. "Are you going to give me a little more feedback than 'I guess'?" she imitated his bored tone for the last two words, then crossed her arms on her chest and stared at him across the small table. 

"I wanna help," Jack sighed. He sipped iced water, shaking the glass a bit so the ice cubes rattled against the glass. He looked thoughtful and Peggy leaned forward, distractedly tugging at the straw in her own iced coffee drink, waiting for him to say which part of the plot bothered or confused him. She was worrying about the convergence of factors that lead up to the beginning of the book. Was her young heroine coming across as too bratty? Too timid? There was such a tight balancing act between sympathy and pity. She'd talked to Daniel about the plot enough times that she felt he had almost as little distance from the story as she did. Jack, though, was an outsider to her writing process and he had asked if she wanted to talk about it. Peggy waited with bated breath.

Jack looked thoughtful for another long moment, then he said: "Maybe run it by me again; typical concerns of 12-year-olds elude me."

"Oh, forget it." Peggy threw the straw back into her drink.

Jack tried to hide an amused smile behind his glass of water, but he didn't try _very hard_. Leaning back in her high-chair, Peggy considered her companion. They occupied two high-chairs in a daytime cafe, right next to the window where the rays of the afternoon sun turned Jack's hair the color of white-gold. He was clean-shaven and well-dressed, and heads turned when the two of them had walked in to find a table. They met up this way whenever Peggy was in the neighbourhood of his office building and Jack wasn't so busy he had to skip lunch. He'd looked harried when they met, in that typical way busy business people looked, but he'd insisted he had time for her to go into details about her book. She'd prepared herself for him to hate the story, maybe, but not this ambivalent indifference. His apparent boredom felt somehow worse.

"Ana is going to murder me." She put her head into her hands momentarily. Mrs. Jarvis was her publicist and the inordinate amount of guilt Peggy felt over the missed draft deadline was due primarily to not wanting to disappoint her. Peggy looked up. "I've got to figure this out."

"Okay," Jack said, leaning forward, spreading his hands on the table. "Make me picture it. Why the suicide attempt? She's only twelve. Nobody understands if a kid wants to kill themselves," his voice was somber.

Peggy stared out of the cafe's window for a moment, trying to remember details that had been so clear in her head the evening before. The busy life of the New York City rushed by in honks and screeching tires, the jabbering noise of conversation. The lunchtime crowd buzzed like a beehive.

"I guess Alice finds herself in a moral vacuum of sorts. Right is wrong and wrong is right. She exists in a space between what adults feel and experience and the childhood she had before her sister had her accident. She's forced to grow up too fast, to experience emotions that are difficult even for adults to process. She doesn't see death as a problem. Death is rest. It's peace, it's not having to worry about the next hour."

Jack listened to her quietly. He didn't offer any comments, looking thoughtfully into the distance. Peggy went on, feeling the characters rise up in front of her eyes, "She watches her parents grieve and she doesn't want them to have to worry about her, too. So she says her goodbyes, feeds her cat one last time, and she walks out into traffic hoping someone will do the job for her. And then these paramedics are in shock, realizing that _this child wants to die_ , so they begin to― Are you even listening?"

Jack's head snapped back to look at her from where he'd been watching the other side of the room. "Y-yeah," his breath stuttered.

Peggy was so far inside her own imagination that it took her a few moments to register that hitch in his voice and the way he'd startled, like a full body shudder.

"Jack?" 

Deathly pale, he blinked slowly at her. Peggy realized he was sweating. He'd made such a convincing picture of thoughtful contemplation, she hadn't even noticed that his breathing had accelerated and he was gripping the table until his knuckles turned white. There was absolutely no reason for it as far as she could see, but Jack seemed lost in the world of his own mind.

"Jack!" Peggy tried to snap him out of it and instantly regretted it, because the sharp sound ricocheted off the high empty walls of the cafe. Jack jumped to his feet. He'd squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, but then they flew open, staring unseeing at the table top between them. A moment later, Jack shot past her, heading to the back of the cafe at a brisk stride, nearly knocking another chair over in utter lack of grace. He was simply trying to escape. She hadn't even had time to call out.

Peggy jumped off the chair and rushed after him, and the large door in the back banged shut in her face. She had to force the unisex restroom door open because he'd slammed it shut but forgot to lock it. When she swept inside the small private room, he stood next to the opposite wall, his back to it, head leaning back against the wall and his throat exposed. His eyes were squeezed shut. Following his own tour, Daniel didn't like to sit in public with his back unprotected, Peggy knew that, but Jack had never had any obvious reaction to crowds, or loud noises or any typical triggers for war vets. She had no idea what had gone wrong.

"Jack," she called softly so as not to startle him again. He didn't have any weapons on him, but that didn't mean he couldn't be dangerous depending on what situation he'd flashed back to. Peggy had no doubt he was relieving some sort of a panic-induced flashback. His broad shoulders shuddered and he clenched his fists, arms rigid at his sides. She stepped closer, calling softly, "Jack, it's me. Snap out of it."

"Peggy?" He tilted his head down slightly at her words, blinking rapidly, coming back to the here and now. She took it as her queue to come closer and reach out for him. When her fingers touched his arm, above the elbow, Jack shuddered again.

"Sorry," he said. One of his hands came up to his sternum and clenched tightly there. It looked like it could leave a bruise.

"It's alright," Peggy whispered. "We're safe now."

"I know, I know," Jack repeated. He turned fully to her now, back still plastered against the white-tile wall. His mouth was a thin line, his eye-lashes wet. "I'm sorry." Before she could try to answer, words spilled in a torrent from his mouth, "The whole thing with the kid. I just went straight back there." Peggy didn't ask where _there_ was. It wasn't the first time Jack had had a less-than-ideal reaction to an ordinary event, but in the past he'd caught himself before the full-blown panic attack. The most he'd done in the past was gone silent and wide-eyed for a while, and he never wanted to discuss it.

She couldn't think what had set him off, concerned in the back of her mind that it could be her talk of suicide in her novel. Jack had not expressed any suicidal tendencies in her presence, but she knew very well he was far from an open book about all the symptoms of his PTSD. Not even Daniel, who attended AA with Jack and who'd recently become Jack's sponsor there knew very much about Jack's experience in Afghanistan. Daniel had his own Iraq tour to draw on for knowledge of how to handle coming back from the war, but it was clear as day their tours had followed very different trajectories. Daniel had come home missing a limb, but two years since he was the better-adjusted of the two. Jack still tried to bury his past in avoidance and liquor. But there was no burying this, Jack was completely distraught.

"There was this kid," Jack said, chest heaving as he fought for every word. "He came at us with a bomb strapped to his chest. I had no choice, it was him or us. Must have been about ten."

"You shot him," Peggy held on to his upper arms. He flinched as though struck, nodding once, and the truth settled between them. She'd known him for almost a year and all she knew about his tour was that it had wrecked him in ways he tried not to let anyone see. He'd never even mentioned what made him pick up the bottle. Anytime the topic came up he'd just say it was bad and switch the subject.

Jack lifted his hands up to his face. "I dream about it a lot," he gasped. Peggy realized he was crying into his hands. Watching someone so controlled crumbling before her eyes was one of the most heartbreaking things she had witnessed.

"I'm so sorry," Peggy said, and put her arms around him. Immediately, Jack's hands went around her shoulders, grabbing her and pressing her in close. He pushed his face into the crook of her neck, choking with emotion, his entire body so tense she felt he might snap in two. Peggy put her hands around his neck, stroked his shoulders. She wondered if anyone had held him like this since he'd come home. If he'd let them.

"So now you know." Jack heaved the words out, shaking. "I helped that kid kill himself." She worried he would start to hyperventilate again. "I pulled the trigger. I still feel it." His right hand made a desperate motion against her back, squeezing the trigger again, tap tap.

"It was war," Peggy said.

"Then why can't it _stop_ ," Jack said. "The war is over. _I need it to stop_."

"I know," Peggy soothed. She couldn't find the right words to tell him that he wasn't alone, that she hurt too, knowing that he was in pain. Her heart felt heavy. "I'm here." He nodded into her shoulder and held on.

For the next minute or two Jack said nothing, just tried to get his breathing under control.

"What a fucking mess," he muttered eventually, the shudders running through his body now ― aftershocks. 

Peggy rubbed his back, finding it hard to talk herself. It was difficult to believe she was standing in a public restroom with him, that she needed to find a way to calm him before someone discovered them and made the difficult situation worse. Not that long ago they'd been having a perfectly normal lunch. Jack had been tense and harried at the start, but nothing terribly unusual for him. So much could turn on a moment, and Peggy felt helpless, awash in the sea of possibilities where something she said could make things worse. But she had to get him to talk, to stop trying to carry everything inside. She was a writer, she could find the words. 

When he seemed to calm, Peggy pulled back a bit, so she could see into his face. Jack let her, his hands sliding off her shoulders down to her arms, above the elbow, not looking inclined to let go. Until now, any previous touches between them had been accidental, so it had thrown Peggy when she first wrapped her arms around him that she could tear through the barrier of personal space between them so casually. Or maybe not casually at all, not in the moment when he'd been caught in the grips of a nightmare from the past. He'd needed her the way a drowning man needs a lifeline, it had been less choice than instinct on his part to hold on. Now though, Jack had calmed significantly; even his hitching breath was nearly unnoticeable except for the fact she felt it through his body where they touched. Now, Jack's choice to keep his hands laying on her arms, became less an expression of raw need than something more complicated. Their foreheads were close, they could have touched. Swallowing against a confused flutter in her chest, Peggy pulled back another inch.

"Are you alright?" The inadequate words fell like stones into the pool of quietness in the small room.

Jack gave an uncertain half-smile and cleared his throat, then clumsily switched the subject. "I've gotta get back to work." And at her expression he shrugged, a touch embarrassed as he admitted, "I'm late for a meeting." His hands slid down her arms, and he slid past her to look at himself in the mirror. While he straightened his suit and hair, Peggy looked critically at his back. No matter how much he primped in the mirror, putting himself together like a jig-saw puzzle, piece by meticulous piece, she couldn't unsee the crumpled version of the picture he presented.

"You're not going back to work, not right away."

"Oh yeah?" The tone was a mix of belligerence and fondness. Jack met her eyes in the mirror, daring her to make him do something he didn't already want.

"Come on," Peggy said, not giving up, "Let's go to my place, we'll talk."

Jack pushed away from the small sink, eyes narrowing as he faced her for real. "I'll pass on the charming family scene involving Sousa cooking dinner."

"He doesn't cook nearly as often as you think," Peggy rebuked. Just because she hadn't applied herself to the kitchen arts didn't mean that she couldn't, in theory, cook something if she wanted to very badly. She thought the return to sarcasm was his way of feeling out a way back to normal. If he truly didn't want her company, he would have been much more blunt about it. Peggy bounded on to the next option: "But we could go to your place."

Jack tilted his head, something soft passing over his expression. Still, he objected, "My place is a mess."

Peggy huffed. "Well these are your two choices, mate, so pick one."

They went to his place. As they left the restroom, another patron heading towards it gave them a dirty look. Peggy suspected the lady thought they'd been making out in there, which would have been the much nicer alternative. Peggy was going to have to find a different coffee shop for their get-togethers, in case Jack didn't want to come back here again.

Jack's apartment wasn't so much messily dirty as having a feel of a space barely lived in. She glimpsed the jumble of covers of his unmade bed in the bedroom before Jack hastily shut the door, but in the living room there stood an impersonal couch-set with a coffee table next to it, and not a great deal more. There was a laptop and a magazine on the coffee table, something about sports cars with a last year's date. Peggy felt like running a finger over the table surface to see if she'd collect dust. The kitchen was the same, modern and cold. He clearly spent very little time in his own apartment. With the hours she knew he worked that wasn't exactly surprising, but it still saddened her because she loved to curl up on her own couch back at her place, often with Daniel at her side doing his own thing. That happened rarely now that Daniel had found a new job, but as a professional writer, Peggy knew the importance of feeling comfortable in her own space.

When she'd first met him Jack had been out of work, but since then a friend of Jack's family had offered him a position at a top marketing firm, and Jack went from playing the layabout to a workaholic within a month of living in New York. The transformation had been startling. The lazily relaxed frat boy from the train ride into Manhattan where they'd met changed like a chameleon into a Type-A marketing personality. Sometimes she'd call him late in the evening and find him still in the office, busily clacking away at the keyboard. At first Peggy had thought it was because Jack liked the job, but now she suspected it was an escape that he no longer wanted to seek inside a bottle. And Peggy understood quite a bit about needing your job.

Jack had called off from work earlier, a crease forming in his brow as he lied about urgent business requiring his personal attention. "I'm gonna pay for that; Vernon doesn't like time off," he mused, hanging up.

That name had come up between them a few times and so far Peggy wasn't terribly impressed with Jack's new boss based on snippets she'd read in the newspapers. But Jack defended him at every turn, and he was closer to the situation and so probably knew better. In any case, she wasn't going to ask Jack about work tonight: it was unlikely to make him fell less stressed. Instead, she cast about for something low pressure to do, fruitlessly running her gaze around the empty room. He'd invited her to sit and offered orange juice from the fridge, but otherwise he seemed equally lost in his own place.

"If you'd rather just spend time together, that's alright too. We could..." her eyes fell on the laptop on the couch, "watch a movie, or something like that."

"I can't watch a lot of the movies anymore." Jack startled her with the admission. "Or play the video games I used to. You know, certain things. Are just―." He fell quiet, the sentence dying unfinished. 

He'd never told her that before. Guiltily, Peggy recalled the times she and Daniel had dragged him to a couple of films that, in retrospect, made her wonder how he'd made it through the day. It had been a fun diversion for her and Daniel, who also enjoyed helping her plot her novels with nary a distressed sigh at all the violence. Peggy had to stop thinking what worked for Daniel would work for Jack; they were too different. For good or ill, Jack had a way of making everything look normal, hiding his actual reaction behind a facade of polite disinterest. It spoke to how overwhelmed he'd been earlier that she got a little peek at the memories he carried. She tried to recall her research into emotional trauma for her book.

"We can talk about it," Peggy offered.

"Not much to talk about," Jack shrugged. "That kid, the one I shot..." he had to clear his throat, "he had this _look_ on his face. Like he welcomed death." Jack shook his head. 

Peggy had to close her eyes for a second. When she opened them, he was slumped down on the sofa, his head in his hands like he had a bad headache. 

She sat next to Jack, putting one open hand on his back. But even as she registered the touch, Jack lifted his head from his hands, glancing at Peggy, frowning. She felt a hesitation crawl up her spine, one she hadn't felt until that moment. There was something resentful in his eyes. She patted his back and rapidly withdrew her hand.

"Have you talked to anyone else about what happened?" She set her hands on her lap. He clenched his in front of him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Oh, _sure_ ," he said blithely, "I enjoy traumatizing people I barely know by talking about the people I killed."

"I don't mean your friends at the AA," she said instead, "I meant a professional."

Jack's eyes blazed anger. "I don't need a shrink. I'm not crazy!"

"Daniel saw a psychologist as part of marriage counseling with Violet, and he says it helped him."

"Helped him get divorced, you mean." He barked out a laugh.

"Counseling didn't save his marriage, but it helped him put the war behind him. Helped him cope."

"I'm coping fine," Jack snarled, and at her incredulous look, he jumped up off the sofa to pace nearby, "One little hiccup on my end and you're ready to pack me off to a white padded cell."

"Jack..." Peggy stood up as well, trying to touch him with her words because she didn't dare to reach for him again. Something that had felt as natural as breathing earlier felt completely forbidden now. She read his unwillingness in the defensive lines of his posture, and still she had to push, she had to try. It was clear as day he hadn't told anyone else, and he needed to talk. "I want to help. You can trust me, I wouldn't let you down." 

He looked at her for a long moment, as though giving the suggestion serious thought. "You know what it feels like to talk about it?" Jack said with an intensity that felt like a physical force, even though he didn't raise his volume; in fact he spoke in a soft, harsh voice. "It feels like being scalded by boiling water, over and over again."

She fought down her flinch and Jack said into the silence between them, still in that harsh, raw tone. "I keep getting all this advice to get some help, to talk to someone about things that bother me. You know what _bothers_ me? That I can't stop thinking about it. That everywhere I go, it follows me. That _you_ won't stop asking about it. I don't want to tell the story so I can relive it, I want to forget about it."

Emotional comfort wasn't her forte. She was mucking things up. Writing was one thing, but dealing with an actual live human being in pain... For all her research, Peggy had no idea what she was doing here. 

Reading a sudden vulnerability in her expression, Jack pounced. Looking almost triumphant he finished off: "You know what I need? How about some goddamn space."

Peggy had never been one to be physically demonstrative, nor one of those people who went for easy hugs and smooches on the cheek with all her girlfriends. Her friend and ex-roommate Angie used to tease her for the bubble of space Peggy maintained around herself, a certain comfort zone that she didn't like to have intruded upon; and maybe being British did have something to do with it. Regardless, nobody had ever accused Peggy of encroaching on their personal space. She drew back, feeling like she'd been violating Jack's boundaries, letting herself run away with a course of action she thought best without first hearing what he wanted. And he'd been straight-forward about pushing back.

Still stinging from the rebuke, Peggy nodded, and for some reason Jack nodded back. Before they stood nodding at each other like fools, she cast about for her purse, finding it on his couch and grabbing it. "I'd better go." Peggy said, feeling strangely breathless. "You'll be alright, won't you?"

Jack blinked. "Yeah." 

Clenching her purse, she strode briskly to the door. There, she turned around for a moment. "Please don't hesitate to call if you need something, Jack. I mean that."

Peggy opened the door and walked out.  


 

* * *

 

"Do you plan to sleep at all tonight?" Daniel leaned against the doorway to her room, rubbing a hand over his muddled with sleep face. 

"I just need to finish this," Peggy answered, glancing only briefly his way, and covering a smile at his messy, bed-head hair, standing every which way. 

In a testament to how long they'd been living together, Daniel didn't question the words, just plodded along the hallway to the living room. It took Peggy another hour to wrap up the scene in her book, and roll back on the high-back leather chair satisfied, having saved and backed up her work. Glancing in the mirror, she straightened out her hair, and winced at the time ― nearly five am ― before joining Daniel in the living room.

"I just finished the chapter!" 

Daniel coughed around the tea he was sipping and whirled around. He was already dressed for work, and had to quickly lean the cup out of the way of his white shirt, just barely avoiding spilling the tea all over himself. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

He grinned wryly, setting the cup on the marble table-top. "I guess the book is going well, then."

"Yes," Peggy beamed. Daniel watched her with affection, not doing much else other than leaning on the counter top to take the weight of his bad leg, which meant he had time to listen to her before he had to head out. The smell of hot bread wafted through the living room: he must have made toast for breakfast. "I've completely changed course on the direction of the first arc," containing her excitement was difficult, "It's going to take rewriting, well, all of what I had really, but _now_ I finally know who Alice is and why confiding in others is so difficult for her."

"And what led to this amazing turnabout?" Daniel pushed a plate of half-finished toast in her direction, and Peggy gratefully jumped on the available food. She was starving. Jack's idea of their regular family meals was vastly different from the reality of the typical fare of dry toast and eggs they managed between the two of them.

"I had a horrid day," she answered, and bit into the toast, letting the buttery goodness dissolve against her tongue for a moment.

Daniel lifted a curious eyebrow. "Is that jerk Samberly yanking you about with the cover art again? Because I swear, I don't know how you tolerate that man."

"Oh no," Peggy said, "actually, I met up with Jack for lunch." A second of Daniel's brows lifted, now requiring clarification. Peggy knew he was assuming they'd had one of their occasional rows, and hurried to explain, "We didn't fight. I was telling him about the book and―" she couldn't go on. It was physically painful to recollect the expression on Jack's face, back in the cafe. "It doesn't matter. You need to leave for work, don't you?" 

Daniel had managed to land a position as a security consultant at a high-tech firm, which made for some odd hours but was a nice change from temporary positions and precarious work which had been his standard fare until recently. This job had stable hours and benefits, and was a foot in the door to bigger things. Daniel was slaving away long hours but he looked happier doing that than he'd been sitting at home watching TV. He was good at his job. He was also too perceptive to let her off the hook that easily.

"I've still got time before Yauch picks me up. What happened?"

Peggy leaned against the marble top, wiping the crumbs off her fingers and sighing as she did so. "I was showing Jack my latest manuscript. Then I got carried away."

Daniel groaned. "You know, Peggy, considering how you two met, I'm surprised you want his opinion about your books." He pushed a new empty tea cup her way, and she set about making herself some tea from the pot he'd boiled earlier.

"Jack has interesting insights and he doesn't mince words," she commented while pouring water over the tea leaves. "I don't mind an occasional scrap if it helps me nail down a tricky detail." If she was being honest, she'd expected Jack to say something like the girl was too whiny, or crying too much. She hadn't expected to see him breaking down in a public restroom. Peggy pushed away the memory of their embrace, shivering all over, and went on to steep her tea determinedly.

"So it wasn't the book?" Daniel asked shrewdly. 

_If only_ the two of them had kept it professional. Peggy shook her head. "He told me something― something very private." Daniel listened quietly from the other side of the counter, leaning on it with both hands, resting his leg before a long day. He had a weary line to his own broad shoulders and little crow marks in the skin near his eyes that were usually put there by either laughter or pain. His eyes were brightly awake and he was completely present, his gaze magnetic, making it impossible to speak anything but the truth. Still, she couldn't betray Jack's confidence. "And I jumped all over him. I just wanted to fix it." 

"That's who you are," Daniel said with a fond little smile lighting up his face. 

He always saw her in the best possible light and it could be wearing to live up to the image he had of her. Today in particular, she didn't deserve his unconditional support. She had lost sight of who she and Jack were to each other: casual friends at best. He had experienced a traumatic episode, but just because Peggy happened to have been around for it didn't give her any right to put her nose into his affairs. He was right to push back. 

"Jack said he wanted space." She stirred the black tea in her cup slowly. She could use a little breathing room herself.

"Peggy, you're not _dating_ him," Daniel said, "It shouldn't be a problem."

"Quite right." Peggy nodded. That morning, she'd thought of her lunch with Jack as a rare diversion, there was no reason she couldn't go back to thinking of it that way now. She had a feeling Jack never wanted to hear about the events of that day spoken aloud again.

Daniel's baritone cut through her faraway thoughts. "Besides Jack texted me. I already knew you'd met." Daniel hurried to assuage her annoyance, "He said something about you thinking he's crazy and asked if I know a good shrink." Peggy didn't know what expression was on her face, she wasn't sure what she felt. "I guess something you said got through," Daniel told her kindly.

"What do you mean?"

"I've been telling Jack to see a counselor for months, and nada, but whatever you two talked about turned him around on the subject. You've been good for him, Peggy." 

"I―" she cleared her throat, "I don't know what to say. He seemed so set against the idea."

"Maybe he's had time to consider it since then," Daniel said, "He's mentioned his company employs a psychiatrist. Dr. Underwood I think, but Jack's reluctant to use company services for this."

"Understandable." Peggy nodded. The second time she'd met Jack, he has been partaking of an AA meeting in a second-rate building in a rundown neighbourhood, even though his family came from money. It wasn't because he was fond of Brooklyn, it was because sometimes the very comfort zone you were used to locked you into a certain pattern of behaviour. 

"I'll ask around. Angie might know to recommend someone. Besides, I think everyone in film uses a psychiatrist at some point in their lives."

"That'd be great," Daniel nodded. "I'll hook him up with Veteran Affairs." He smiled, and the crow's feet wrinkles by his brown eyes lengthened. "And now I really do have to go to work. I'm glad your book is working out, though."

"I'm an emotional breakdown away from nailing it." Peggy smiled back. "I think I'll have a nap."

Daniel glanced at the clock, showing 5:15am. "Your schedule...makes no sense."

Peggy shook her head and sashayed towards her bedroom. Life didn't make sense sometimes, but therein lay the excitement. An unexpected encounter on a train could twist your world around, expose you to influences you never thought you might care for. Sometimes you had lunch with a friend and got on with your day. Other times your perception of the other person shifted forever.

Peggy made herself remember for a moment other curve-balls of life she hadn't seen coming. She remembered Michael's grin before he faded out of view, turning the corner street from her house. That's when it all started, her need to tell stories, with her memories of Michael leaving: from the letters she wrote to him, to the pages she scribbled down in her journals, kept in boxes on the floor of her closet, so she would never forget him, once he was gone. Writing about Michael kept him alive for Peggy, letting her remember how he had lived. His death made her.

She would never again have Michael to talk to, never reach him with her words, but she could still reach others. If Jack kept in touch with Daniel and her, maybe in time she'd know the words to use with him as well. So much of life was easier if you held on to the people in your life.

Pulling out her phone, she texted Jack, so he'd never have a doubt about everything being normal between them. Another lunch at a different cafe, in a few weeks time. Jack had to be asleep, but she still stared at the glossy phone screen for a while, wondering if he might be reading her words at that very moment. Peggy had hope she reached him.  


 

* * *

 

**Fin.**


End file.
